Introduction
Olympus Australia approached SM2 in late 2006 with a tender to build a product catalogue component for their Joomla! based site. After successfully implementating the first release of the component, Olympus utilised SM2 again to deliver, the core component, several modules and a mambot to achieve the clients' needs and facilitate ease-of-navigation throughout the site. SM2 also created the web templates for the site based on the supplied designs by Olympus branding and marketing agency.
Expectations
Olympus Imaging Australia Pty Ltd is responsible for the marketing and distribution of innovative consumer products in Australia and agents in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti and the South Pacific region. Olympus Imaging Australia Pty Ltd encompasses a broad range of imaging products from digital and film cameras designed for the entry-level photographer through to the professional photographer, binoculars and camera accessories to ensure you get the most use out of your Olympus equipment.
The key goals of the custom built component were to:
- Create a Product component and module to be compatible with the Joomla Content Management System (v1.0.x).
- Licensing and build of the component should allow Olympus to make changes to the source in the future using in house technology staff
- Empower Olympus to simply manage and update its website and on-line activities
- Gain new capabilities through the operation of Olympus website
- Create aesthetically pleasing and usable site interface based on supplied designs
The Solution
Olympus has a large product range that spans a number of categories and products. To ensure future proofing the site was catered to and to easily access this large archive of products, a large amount of planning was put into making items in the component easy to manage for administrators and simple to navigate through for site visitors.
A tab-style "design-paradigm" has been used throughout the site to segment information and on the backend it helps to separate the different steps involved in managing a product or category.
In addition to the many interface conveniences SM2 built into the component, there is extensive automation of the system that goes on without involvement by the site administrator, thus reducing administrative tasks. For example, each product image needs to be displayed in two different sizes throughout the site; a smaller view that displays when looking at a category of products; and a larger one that displays when viewing more information on a particular product. Rather than burden the Olympus staff with the task of creating both these images, we enabled them to upload one image (of any size) which is then copied and scaled to the two image sizes needed.
Olympus products often come in different colours as well and they required an easy system for people visiting the site to be able to see products in these different colours. Again, we wanted to make life as easy as possible for administrators and created a system that would allow them to specify the colour of the product in each image; on the front-end of the site, a coloured-dot is automatically generated which site-visitors can click on to view an image of that product in the colour they selected.
Conclusion
Since the delivery of the core component, SM2 have been retained by Olympus to build new features and capabilities for the Olympus site. We are looking forward to an ongoing relationship with the Olympus team.
www.olympus.com.au
Date Launched: 19 January 2007
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